Nicola Sturgeon’s testimony today at the UK Covid inquiry wrapped up three weeks of public hearings in Scotland focused on decision-making and political governance. The former first minister has seen declining popularity in recent months, but it is her Covid legacy that should also come crashing down to earth. Despite consistently claiming that she “made many mistakes” during the pandemic, Sturgeon’s testimony ultimately served to uphold the unquestionable dogmatism of lockdown, and, with it, the illusions of maximum suppression.
Affirming her belief in the (political) power of lockdown, the ex-leader of the Scottish National Party said:
Alluding to Holyrood’s maximum suppression strategy, inspired by the Zero Covid philosophy, Sturgeon reiterated the Scottish government’s official approach in saying that “there is no such thing as a level of acceptable loss.” Yet Prof. Mark Woolhouse, a leading infectious disease epidemiologist from the University of Edinburgh and an adviser to the UK and Scottish governments, previously told the inquiry that this approach was fundamentally wrong. He argued that there was too much focus on reducing human contact, that bans on outdoor gatherings were unscientific, the lifting of restrictions was slow, disease models were given too much weight in decision-making, and no assessment of the harms of lockdown was ever conducted.
These points were not addressed during Sturgeon’s appearance. In fact, some of the most crucial questions were not even asked. Why did the Government follow policies with such weak evidence? How did it fail to balance infection control with social harms?
Just this week, new studies were published on the harms of Covid policies. A post-pandemic surge in mental health conditions, such as ADHD, means that an estimated one in nine UK children now have a disorder. A second study has estimated that 56,000 more children in the UK are obese due to our collective Covid response panic and could face “lifelong health consequences”. Excess deaths, most likely due to pandemic-related disruptions to medical services and lifestyle changes, also remain elevated in Scotland.
Instead, Sturgeon faced hours of questions about relatively trivial details. This allowed the media to focus on her deleting extensive WhatsApp messaging (despite previous claims that she would keep all communications), use of burner phones (which she denied), and her propensity for tears.
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